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PERON AND THE NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

Tomas El oy Mar t i nez Fe llow Woodrow Wi lson Center

Tomas~ E1 oy Marti~ nez is a writ e r and a journalist. Current ly , he is a Fellow of the Latin American Program ( 1983-1984).

Copyright © 1984 by Tomas Eloy Martinez Thi s essay is one of a series of Working Papers of the Latin Ame rican Program of the Woodrow Wi l son Internat ional Center for Scholars. Sara Castro­ Klar~n is the editor. The series i ncludes papers by Fellows, Guest Schola r s, and inter ns withi n the Program and by members of the Pr ogram s taff and of its Academic Council, as well as work presented at, or resulting f rom, seminars, workshops, colloquia , a nd conferences held unde r the Program's auspi ce s. The series aims to extend t he Program' s discussions to a wider community throughout the Ameri cas, and to help authors obtain timely criticism of work in progr ess. Support to make distribution possible has been provided by the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development .

Single copies of Working Papers may be obtained without charge by writing to:

Latin Ameri can Progr am, Working Papers The Wilson Cent er Smithsonian Institution Building Washington , D. C. 20560

The Woodrow Wilson Internati onal Cent er for Scholars was created by Congress in 1968 as a "living insti tut ion expressing the ideals a nd c oncerns of Woodrow Wilson • • • symbolizing and s t rengt hening the fruitful relati on between the world of learning and t he world of public affairs ."

The Cente r ' s Latin American Pr ogram, established in 1977 , ha s two ma jor aims: t o suppor t advanced research on La.tin America, the Caribbean, and inter-American affa irs by social scientists and humanists, and to help assure that fres h insights on t he region are not limit ed t o di scussion within the scholarl y community but come to the attention of interested persons wi th a variety of professional perspecti ves: in , international or gani­ zations , the media, bus i ness, and the professions. The Program is supported by contributions from f oundations, corporations, international organizations, and indivi duals.

LATI N AMERICAN PROGRAM ACADEMIC COUNCIL

Wi lliam Gl a de, Chairman, University of Texas, Austin Albert Fishlow, University of Cali f ornia, Berkel ey Enr i que Florescano, Inst i tuto Nacional de Antropolog! a e Historia, City, Mexico J uan , Yale Universi ty Leslie Mani gat , Universida d Sim6n Bolivar, Cara cas, Venezuel a Gui llermo O'Donnell, University of Notre Dame; CEDES, , ; IUPERJ, Rio de Janeiro, J oyce Riegelhaupt, Sarah Lawrence College Mario Vargas Llosa, Lima,

Louis W. Goodman, Acting Secretary ~ PERON AND THE NAZI WAR CRIMI NALS

Tomis Eloy Martfnez Fellcu Wilson Center

In May 1965, while on a holiday in the mountains of Cordoba, Argen­ t ina, actress Norma Aleandro met and befriended an old German couple who l oved books and flowers. In the_a f t ernoons, the three took long strolls through a vine-shade d park, where t hey spoke of politics and world affairs. In the evenings, they dined t ogether on borsch, after which the husband would enthusiastically recite poems by Schiller, or his wife would play Schubert pieces on the viol i n. One day, the couple showe d Norma Aleandro one of their most prized possessions : a rare edition of Goethe's Faust, published in around 1850, and bound in a soft s hiny leather which the actress was unable to identify . Curious, she asked the couple what t ype of binding it was. The o ld woman lowered her soft gaze and murmured, "It's Jewi sh skin. My husband was once an official at a concentration camp in Poland ."

The furor crea'ted in Argentina by the kidnapping of -­ one of those responsible for t he " "--from a Buenos Aires s uburb i n late 1960 had not yet died when Norma Aleandro went public with this story. As usual, t he country found itself divided between those wh o were indignant over the vi olation o f national sovereignty (Eichmann was kid­ napped by an I sraeli connnando and t aken to Jerusalem without the knowledge or permission of the Argentine ), and, on the other hand, those who had been surprised by t he degree of hospitality that the country had apparently offer ed Nazi war criminals under the Juan Peron government in the immediate postwa r era.

The migrati on of Nazi s to Argentina was only a rumour when Norma Aleandro related her conversation with the old couple. Years later, be­ tween 196 8 and 1970 , Peron confirmed the fact tha t he had given r efuge to several thousand Nazis f or, he said, "humanitarian reasons , 11 1 and tha t he had allowed t he i mmigration of "five thousand Croats whom Tito had threatened with de ath. 11 2

Disputes over the numbers of emigrants would begin much lat er: in 1982 , director of the Cente r of Jewish Documentation in , said that Peron had provided 7, 500 blank Argentine passports to Nazi fugitives. The first I s raeli amb assador to Buenos Aires, Jacob Ts ur, maintained that Weisenthal's calculations were too high, and adde d that Peron's alleged was but a North American prejudice . "In Washington 's simplistic llerspective," he wrote, "Peron na-d t o oe either a _N~~i _:i r_a_ communist. 11 3

Today few deny that Argentina was one of the principal places of refuge in South Ame rica for German and Croat war criminal s . Th i s paper 2

seeks to explain how these fugitives e ntered the country and why this mi gra­ tion opened and was officially administered by the Argentine government.

My remarks today are not t aken f rom the book I have been writing on Peron during my fellowship he re at the Wilson Center. In the book, which I have not yet finished, I attempt to e xamine the complex personal i ty of a military who in t urn be came the caudillo of the worker masses, dnd who dedicated the better part o f his life towards cons olidating the military classes ' hold over the who l e of Argentine societ y . It i s, of course, important b:oth to know who Pe r on was and to appr eciate his politi­ cal style i n order to understand why he opened the country to the Nazis, and why, in his l ater years in exile i n Santo Domingo a nd , he c ul ­ tivated friendshi ps with Ge rmans l ike , t he flying ace from the who rescued Mussolini f rom Mt. Great Sasso in 1943, and Hans-Ulrich Rudel, one of Hermann Goering's trusted pilots.4

There are several reasons why t elling this tale is difficult. First, there are so many contradictor y and opposing alignments among the Argentine armed forces in 1945, that oft en a pro-German could also be a lib­ eral demo c rat,5 while another who publicly favored an al lied victory might be writing ant i-British t r e atises decrying that countr y ' s economic vora­ ciousness. 6 Matters are also complicat ed by Peron himself, who seeded his trail with half-truths and f a l se leads. Language--which in itself is al­ ready a form of concealment - -served Pe r on almost unfailingly as a means to misguide and mislead; it seems as i f his words were chosen only to disori­ ent and move us in almost any dire ction except towards t he truth. Joseph Page, in his b i ography of Per6n , has captured the essence of this phenom­ enon in t hese words: "He would never sacrifice practicality on the altar of ideological coherence. 11 7

Prelude: Peron and the Army

In order to pick up the t hread of this story, it is he lpful to re­ v i ew certain aspects of Peron 's milita r y background. Fi rst, it is neces­ sary to emphasize t h at Peron, like most of his clas smates at the army academy, was s chooled in Prussian mil itary doctrine. By 1910 , one third of the professor s teaching at t he Superi or War College we re or ha d been members of the Army High Command o f t he . The Argentines s t udied the strategies of Mo ltke, Hi ndenberg, Ludendor f f , and other Prus­ sian marshals of the Great War in minute detail, seemin gl y f orgetting that the Germans had been defeated. I n his class notes, Peron struggled t o rationa lize t h ese defeats, attributing them to lack of materiel and equipment, or t o the late arrival of reinforcements.

The German influence was so perva sive that in order to appreciate its magnitude, one need only examine the "Official Library" catalogue--a col ­ lection of texts s tudied by t h e majority of Argentine captains. Between 1919, the year of its ince ption, and 1929, the library issued a total of 126 publications. Of those, 60 were works translated f r om the German.

Among the authors incl uded i n the library was the young Per8n. Ther e, in 1931, he published the book that cont ains , in embryonfc form, the foun- dations for all of his late r speeches a nd studies: Worl d War, 1914. .Q£­ e r a tions in Eas t e rn Prussi a and Galitzia. Th e r e i s ha rdly a page in this 3

work wh e re Peron does not expres s his admiration for the Pr us sian Army' s strategic and organizational talent, or where he does not quote exhaus­ tively from General Alfred von Schlieffen, whose comments Peron later appropria ted as his own.8

Shortly before the Second World War e xploded in , Peron was sent to observe 's northern alpine battalions in or der to compl e t e his military education. While in Europe, he was also able at that time to make a clandestine visit t o Wehrmacht outposts near Tannenberg, a battle camp he had desc ribed i n h i s f i r st book.9 He returne d to Argentina from Europe in tent on spreadi ng among his pee r s the idea of " a new social­ ism, of a nationalist bent," s olidl y opposed to communis m and colored by his admiration for the ability to mobilize the masses .10

The proved fertile ground in which to sow such ideas. During the previous decade, the younge r officials had be come i ncreasi ngly r e sentful towards t he traditional politicians, whom t hey blame d f or the corruption and e lectoral fraud preval ent in the country.11 Questionable gove rnment pract ices had accorded t he British with valuable railroad and u t ility concessi ons, and t his , a l ong wi th the presence of p r o-Bri t ish lawyers in executive ministri e s, i r rit a ted the country's captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels to no e nd . Alain Rouquie emphasizes t he f act that "for the defende r s of t errit orial integrity , the Uni t ed Kingdom" ... was still "the illegal occupi er of t he Mal vinas Islands ; that is to say, a hereditary enemy. 11 12

I n June 1943 these office rs rose up against that past. A military coup engi neered by the GOU ( Group of United Officers or Group Working f or Un ifica t ion), a s e cret military lodge whose memb ership incl uded over one thousand staunchly committed army l e aders,13 overthrew the conser vative President Ramon S. Castillo as he lay plans for a new e lectora l scam. Th e day aft e r t he coup, the GOU i nstalle d Gene ral Pe dro Pablo Rami r ez as president of the republic a nd General Edelmira J. Farrell as t he Mini ster of War. Peron, one o f the more active leade rs of the lodge , assumed a l ess importan t position, Dire ctor of Labor, in an obs c ure administrative dependence t ha t had, until t hat point, s eeme d a l l but us eless.

Neverthe l ess , by the en d of 1943 Peron was t he only membe r of t he ruling group who s eemed t o have a clear idea of how to use and how to keep power. From his base at the Nati ona l Labor Depa rtment , he began to est ab­ lish a r e putation as a miracle worker. He resolve d s t rikes , me t dai ly wit h dozens of l abor delegat ions , and p romulga t ed l aws which f avored peasants and the industrial p roleta riat . Soon the Department commanded a near mi nisterial r ank, a nd became known as the Secr ria t of Labor and Socia l We l far e . Whe n businessmen began to e xpress lll1ease over Pe r 6n' s activities, he mollified t hem wit h an extensive and i ntell i gent speech, de live r e d a t the Buenos Ai r es Stock Exchange . Pe ron tol d the asse mble d group that his Secr e tariat " had, from t he earliest s t ages , paci f i e d union syndicali sts. It is a grave mistake to think that l abor s yndica lism pre judices the employer. ( • • • ) To t he contr a r y , it i s a way for t he employe r to avoi d having t o do battle a gainst his wor kers . 11 14 I n this f ashion, Peron inaugurated h i s plan for an alliance of clas s e s--t he social pact--while at the same time increasing his prest ige with i n army circl es , eve n while under t he s hadow of the min i ste r o f war, Gene r a l Farre ll. 4

In January 1944, Secr etary of St a te Cordell Hull announced t hat t he would provide arms and war materiel to Brazil, to assist that country's expedition to the front. Because she was ne utral, Argen­ tina was excluded from all such armament programs. The Buenos Aires mil­ itary government reacted with alarm t o the fact that the United States assisted modernization of t he Brazili a n army would tip the Latin American balance of power in its favor. The e q uilibritnn of force was about to be shattered.

Convinced that the fact t hat Arge ntina was not i n favor of the al­ lied cause meant she was against i t, Washington began to s tep up its pressure on the country. In r e sponse , posi tions among the ruling group s p lit. Both Pe r on and Farre ll unde rstood t hat it was necessary to change their positions so that Argentina ' s i solationism would n o t prejudice it after the war. But neither offi c i al wi shed to risk creating enemies among their numerous counterparts who were stil l insiste nt on remaining ne utral .

In the third week of 1944, a trivial incident, the alleged invo lve­ ment in a German spy ring of an Argentine consul, served as a pretext for President Ramirez to declare martial law and break relations with the Axis. But Washington was not p lacated with the rupture, having prefe rred a for­ mal declaration of war. Within the Argentine army circles, however, it triggered the outcry which Peron had forseen. One month l ater, after being taken hostage by the connnanders of the most important Buenos Aires garrisons , Ramirez was forced to resign. A very r eliable source has con­ firmed that it was Peron who installed General Farrell as the new presi­ dent, while managing to have himself named as the Minister of War. 15

The new war minister, wh o a l so retained his post at the Secretariat of Labor, and who was also soon n ame d vice president, dedicated the fol­ lowing months, April 1944 to Septe mber 1945, to gaining control ove r the a rmy's organizational structur e and t o fulfilling the individual and pro­ fessional desires of his fellow off icers. Peron established a fund for mortgage loans for housing, personally dictated promotions and retirements, i ncreased the total number o f officers, and demonstrated that h e, mo r e than any of his predecessors , was c ommi tted to augmenting and modernizing the 's arms.16

But it was not easy for the country, mired in its: i s o lationism, to obtain new military equipmen t . Between March and Septembe r of 1944, the Argentine military attache in Madrid, acting unde r i nstructions from his governmen t, conducted a ser ies o f negotiations with t he representative of Skoda and Br unner, the German munitions firm.17 The fact that Buenos Aires would attempt s uch n egotiat ions after its rupture with the Axis, at a time when the Reich's i n d ustries could not even satisfy i ts own needs at the front, i l lustrates just how desperate the Argentine military was to escape the United States' pressure .

In February 1945, Peron conducted secret disc uss ions with a special mission from t he United States Department of State in Buenos Aires . Again the objective was to convince t he United States t o lend military assistance to Arge ntina, in return for which Buenos Air es would carry out its Pan-American commitments and declare war on the Axis, "as soon as its 5

dignity permitted it to do so." At a continental conference , held at Chapultepec Palace in Mexico Ci ty during the last week of February and first week of March 1945, the Argentine government was pre s sed to decide once and for all whether i t would declare war on and its allies. Farrell and Peron saw no a l ternative b ut to cave in. On March 27, when t hey finally declared war, t hey astutely invoked the covenant signed in Mexico as the sole reason for their action.

In late 1945, Per~n, who by then h ad resigned from all government posts and had announced his candidacy for the presidency of the republic, attended a conference where he tol d h is audience that even a fter Argentina had complied with its Pan-American· commitments, the United States govern­ ment had continue d to treat the country as it did the defeated na tions; thereby classifying the Farrell admi n istration as a "N azi regime" and meddling in Argentina's domestic politics to promote Per on's presidential adversary.18

It is true that the most serious attacks made against Peron during t his period emanated from t he Ame rican press, which repeatedly labelled the candidate and his new wife fo rmer Nazi agents.19 These charges were never substantiated.

At this point the ex-ambassador to Argentina, Spruille Braden, who was servi ng as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, and who found i t difficult to hide his intense dislike for Peron, com­ mitted a crucial mistake. Two weeks before the Argenti ne pr esidential elections of 1946, he recommended th a t the State Department publish what quickly became known as t he Blue Book,20 a pamphlet wh ich purported to document the infiltration of Nazi s into the executive chambers of the Argentine military government, wi t h t he obvious intention of prejudicing the candidacy of "the colonel of the people." Peron immediately took advantage of the faux pas. He went public with the evi dence of American meddling in a domesti c poli tical matter and revealed t he State Depart­ ment's partiality toward h i s opponent--who, paradoxically, was a member of the communist party. Fi nally, he told his countrymen that the elec­ toral contest was not between Peron and Jose P. Tamborini, but r a ther between Braden and Peron. The surge of national pride wh ich foll owed helped Peron carry the e l ection by a much greater margin than even he had hoped for.

Peron has been classified a l ternately as a fascist, a Bonapartist, a populist, and a demagogue. The reality is more complex. From Bona­ partism Peron derived (perhaps unconsciously) the notion of assimilating the masses into the established order; f rom the concept that the masses should be mobilized, and that they could be stir red to action by the intelligent use of . He never showed himself to be anti­ Semitic, and, as Page suggests , one of the fundamental differences between Peron's and the fascist was "his visceral distaste for violence ," at least while in exile during bis l atter years. Because of his training at the Superior War College , as well as his authoritari an concep tion of politics, Peron undoubtedly sympathized with the Axis. He culti vated pro-Axis friends quite openly. Even s o , he always maintained (as Page says) "an appearance of i mpar tiality. 11 21 6

It would seem then that Peron did not arrange the i mmigration of thousands of Nazi s to Argentina--unde r the aus pices of the Argenti ne governmen t--for purely ideologica l rea sons. That would have been inge­ nuous. Peron would never have consented to an alliance wit h the outcasts unless he were certain to gain something from it. Most of ten, the ex­ planation offered is that he did it for money, although there has never been any proof of this. It is cl ear that many of the Nazi high command succeeded in depositing funds i n Buenos Aires at least six mon ths before the close of the war.22 But no one has been able to ascertain what be­ came of these deposits. For many years, especially after 1955, Peron was also accused of having accepted commi s sions on the concession of false passports and asyl um to Nazi f ugitives . Another well-known s tory says that Evita had a secret Swiss ba nk account in which such f unds were de­ posited, and that once she died, Peron was unable to withdraw any of the money. I t appea rs that these allegat i ons, to the extent t o which they have been investigated, are me re fab r ications, the products of fertile imaginations.

Perhaps Pe r on's moti ves were s i mple r than this, as we l l as more pro­ fessional. As a key military f igure i n Argentina, and a s the embodiment of the army' s vi s ion for society, Peron appears to have reasoned that a contingent of Na zis would be well qualified in the technical realm to con­ tribute to the country's i ndustrializa t ion policy, initiated in 1944. Peron envisioned a self-sufficien t Argentina, a country t hat would be able to negotiate with the grea t worl d powers from a position of strength, and not be humiliated. The war, whi ch weakened Great Br i tai n whi le also allowing Argenti na to accumul a te l arge reserves of gold, s ignalled the end of a long histor y of Argentine economi c subservience to , which the latter had imposed i n the mid-nineteent h century. Per on was a virulent anti-communist, but Braden had i nspir ed within him deep resent ment of the United States. Peron's logical res ponse was thus the " ," a declaration of economic indepen dence, as well as a play to national pride. But to Peron's way of thinking, in order to establish rea l inde­ pendence, Argentina needed its own me r chant fleet, an industrial infra­ structure, sufficient technical e xpert i se to mount its own arms and air­ plane factories, and if at all possibl e, its own nuclea r energy program. At the Superior War College he ha d emb r aced as dogma the intellec t ual superiority of the Germans, a nd had come to admire t h e t echnological bril­ liance which unleashed the Bli t zkrieg and had imposed Ge rman hegemony on Europe for almos t four years. Pe ron needed German technici ans, and he di d not mind the moral price he would have to pay to obtai n them.

How he did so is another story.

The Three Tapes

Peron alluded to this topic f or the first time in t he s pring of 1967, when he live d in exile in Madrid. There he r eceive d a casual vis i t or, Eugenio P. Rom, who recor ded h is l ong talk with the f ormer president and in 1980 publishe d it in book f orm, Thus Spoke Juan Peron.

Peron told Rom that even aft e r t he break in rela t i ons, Argentina maintained contact with the Ge rmans. He added that Argentina di d not de­ clare war on the Axis i n 1945 because of pressure from other La tin Ame rican 7

countries, but be cause "it s ui ted" the Gennans.

"Were Argentina to become a 'belligere nt,' it woul d have to enter Germany at the time of the final denouement; t his would mean that our planes could be of invaluable assistance."

"At that time we had FA.i.'1A plane s ( Argentine Aereal Merchant Fleet) and the boats pur chased from I taly available to us. We did as requested . After a cabinet di scussion of the matte r, President Fa r rell declared war."

"That is how a large n umb er of pe r s ons were able to come to Argenti na."

"Every type of technic:,_ an and other specialist which Argentina lacked ca me to incorpora te himsel f into t he na tional proj e ct."

"People who quickly became very us eful in their respective fields of specialty and who s ave d us yea rs of tra i ning."

" ... later, after we had a ppropriate d the English railroads, more t han 700 of those boys who had come from Germany began to work for us. "

" This is not to mention t hos e in the military and civilian plane factories and th e othe r specialties. I t was a gr eat cont r i bution t o our nascent i ndustrie s. Few peopl e know this, because we t old very f ew. "

"At tha t time we pre ferre d to l e t the i mperi alists think that we had fina lly ce de d t o their be llige rent demands . For t 1:-~ time it s uited us to appear accommodating, mo s: i mportantly to gain time ."23

Cynicism? A mo cking of history , wh i ch Pe r on had always wished t o domesticate, to write in his own fas hion, " creating step by step a memory that woul d finally displace the memori e s o f othe rs," as he t old me in 19 72?24 Or was i t rathe r a dark wish, so characteris t ic of Peron , that his acts be apart from history, as f a r removed from any j udgment as pos­ sible, i n a sphere which transcende d mora l i ty and hatre d , where not even the counter- history wri tte n by his adve r sarie s could touch him?

The ex-president alluded again t o the matter in his a utob iogra phy, Yo, Juan Domingo Per6n, b ased on recordings made and ent ruste d t o a "woman intimate to the famil y ," and edited in b y a tri o of j ournal­ ists.25 It is difficult to disti nguish in the text be tween Peron' s com­ ments and those of the e di tors, because both a r e i nte rwoven , a nd of ten long paragraphs which are undoub t edly those of Peron a re not s e t off in quotes. Even s o , i t is e vident tha t t he ma terial is authentic . Ma ny por­ tions of the book we r e take n from the me moi rs on which Pe r on was wor king be twee n 1969 a nd 1971 with h i s private s ecretar y Jose Lopez Rega, espe­ cially the chapters which deal wi th h is yea rs in exile .

The be ginni ng of the na r ration s eems to be what in Ar genti na is known as a "guit a rreo," an i nvent ion or aside meant to di s tract the liste ne r. Peron claims tha t many of the Ge rman r e fugee s made their way t o t he Argentine coasts by way of "the U- 530 and U-5 32 submarines ," which s urfaced in the Ma r del Pl a t a in J uly and August 1945 , respe c tive l y . The se two Ge rman s ubma rine s gave themse lves up to the Arge n tine naval 8

authorities. One was the U-530; the other was actually the U-977. Neither carried the fabled technici ans or any war criminal s. The crew members were scrutinized very carefully by the United States Naval In­ telligence Service, which found no e vidence which would give any founda­ tion to the stories then circulatin g, including the most e xtravagent of the tales: that and Eva Braun had travelled aboa rd. The U-530 carried 54 men, whose ages averaged 23 years; the captain was 25 years old . The U-9 77' s crew was slightly smaller, 48 men, none of whom were any older.26

After his " guitarreo," Peron gets to the heart of the matter. He maintains that he received the f ugitives "for humanitarian reasons," and speculates t hat their number s total led several thousand. He also refers to the entry of "five thousand Croat s threatened with dea th by Tito," and bitterly condeums the t rials, which he calls " an i nf amy ... , "the enormousness of which his tory wil l not forgive."27

One appendix to the now f amous r eport by the United States military attache i n , Vincent La Vista, dated May 1947, reveals the names and c redentia l s of some of the Croats given refuge by Peron: Drago Kre rnzir, " formerly Commander of a Concentration Camp near Yugoslavia , held respon­ sible for numerous deaths"; J uan Percevick, "forme rly membe r of t he Us ta­ schi Police, entered Argentina as a ' gardene r,' e t c ." Milo Bogetich, another ex-member of the Ustaschi Police, also appeared on the list. For several years now, Bogeti ch h as served as Isabel Peron' s bodyguard in Spain. According to La Vista, Ustas chi was the name of t he Croat terror­ ist organization founded by An te Pavelic in 1923, and the false passports under whi ch the members of t his group travelled were provided by the In­ stituto San Jeronimus in Rome, t he visas issued by the Argentine consul in Trieste. 28

In the same appendix , La Vista maintains that the Argentine govern­ ment guar anteed the entry of a quota of 500 ustaschis each month, and that the embarkations to Buenos Aires were managed through the Societa di Vavigazione Italia & Fratelli Kosulich, from the port of Genoa. 29

In Yo, Juan Domingo Peron, the ex-president discusses only the migra­ tion of "useful Germans," arrange d by Argentine f unctionaries assigned to Swe den and Switzerla nd for that purpose. Peron insis ts that the migra­ tions constituted a sort of competition with the and the United States to recruit brains. Obviously , he prides himself on the fact that the Ger~ans always preferre d the Argen t ine alternative .30

Who were the " useful Ge rmans" Peron s poke of? The only scientist of any reasonable standing he was able to bring to Argenti na appears to have been Kurt Tank, one of the Luftwaffe 's experts on aerodynamics, who went on to build a military airplane f a ctory in Cordoba, wit h the help of 12 or 15 disciples. 31 Tank later sugges t ed that Pe ron al l ow Ronald Richter, a nuclear physi cist, to enter Argenti na. With Peron ' s aid, Richter set himself up at the Huemul Island research center, near , where he enjoyed plentiful supplies and equipme nt. In February 1951 Richter an­ nounced that "he had produced and controlled nuclear energy through a process of fusi on." In wha t proved a great blunde r, Peron heral ded the "discovery" with much fanfare, assuring the public t hat Argentina would 9

soon sell "nuclear energy for dome tic use in litre and hal f -li tre bottles."32 Obviously, he ended up with mud on his face, i n an inciden t that the Argentines came to call a " papelon his tori co," an enormous embarrassment.

Aside from Tank and his dis ciples, no other Nazi scientists who might have justified this mass migr a tion organized by Per on entered Ar­ gentina. On the other hand , t he l i st of notorious war criminals is im­ pressive: Adolf Eichmann, Edwa rd Roschmann--known as "the b utcher of Riga," Jan Durcansky , the former SS offi cer accused of killing 50 , 000 Czech resistance figh ters, and, within the realm of conjecture, , head of the Chancellery of the , and Heinrich Muller, the chief. An article published by Le Monde Diplomatique in July 1983 offers some informed specul a t i on on the latter two.33

It is also difficult to imagine with whom Peron might have a r ranged to declare war on Germany on March 26, 1945, if his comments on the matter are to be believed. Did he contact Germans living in Ar gentina, s ome of whom had been his professors a t the Superior War College ? Or was he in touch with representatives of J oachi m von Ribbentrop , t he foreign minister of the Third Reich, through Argent ine diplomats assigned to Spain and Portugal?

The first hypothesis seems the more likely of the two. I? 1969, the former president told historian Felix Luna that in Februa ry of 1945, when t he outcome of the war was obvious , he met with "some old German friends, who also happened to speak for their community," and informed them that "Please understand, we have no choice but to go to war, for i f we do not, you will go to Nuremberg. 11 34 The mention of Nuremberg was , of course, an anachronism, but Peron did not mind taki ng s uch liberties with history .

The second hypothesis s hould not be completely discarded. In Septem­ ber of 1970 in Madrid, Per on, in a t aped interview, t old me,

Quite some time before the end of the war, we had prepared our­ selves for its aftermath. Germany had been defeated, that we were sure of. The vi ctors h oped to take advantage o f the great technological advances that country had made over the course of ten years. It was impossi le to obtain their hardware; it had been destroyed. What remained we re the men. We were also in­ terested in this. We let the Germans know that we were going to declare war on them so as to save thousands of l ives . We ex­ changed messages with them through Switzerland and Spain. Franco quickly understood our intentions and helped us . The Germans we re in accordance. Whe n the war e nde d, t hose useful Germans helped us bui l d new factories and improve the old. In the process, they helped t hemselves .35

No Spanish s ource has conf irmed this statement. And one of the few functionaries with access to ' s personal papers--the lieutenant general who shared Fran co' s na me and was his first cousin-­ vehemently denied Peron's allegations .36 I t would have seemed that Peron's remarks amounted only to another false lead, a new " guitarreo," were it not for certain United States military intelligence documents which corroborate, if only partially, the ex-pre sident's s tory. 10

The following excerpt is taken from an Augus t 30 , 1944 secret repo rt by the naval attache stat::_oned at the United States Embass y in Madrid. The information is attributed to "usua ~~ :;_y reliable s ources":

Through connivance of the Argentine Embassy, Germans are ob­ taining passports and vis as to go to Argentina. ( ... ) The Argentine passport i s issued by t he Argentine consulate in Lisbon in t he name of the f leeing German but with the place of birth listed as a t own i n Argentina (frequentl y Buenos Aires). The story is then that t he subject was born of parents with German ancestry i n Argentina and had retained his citizenship though having lived in Germany most of the following years ( if t he Ge rman name is too well-known another German name is substituted as the subject rarely speaks Span­ ish). The passport is t he n received by the subject in Ma dri d. The operati on is done wit h the full knowledge of t he German Embassy in Madrid but is permitted only if subject signs a paper swearing that he will continue to work for the Father­ land if necessary and admits liability for military service in Germany at some possible time in the future. ( . .. ) I t is further stated that the Spanish Foreign Office and the Seguri­ dad are cogni zant of the maneuver and giving the utmost facilitie s.37

Fourteen months later, in October of 1945, another report from the United States military attache i n Madrid, Colonel Wendell G. Johnson , paints a more colorful and pathet ic pic ture. The protagonist of this story is the Argentine consul in , a certain Mr. Molina.

According to the doc1..UI1ent, Molina had started a b usiness selling Argentine passports to Nazis and Gennan agents, with the knowledge and complicity of Dr . Samuel Sequerra, chief of the Joint Welfare Organization for Portugal and Spain. The price of the passports is said to have varied between U.S. $5,000 and $7 , 000.

Molina was a Rlllllanian J ew whose father emigrated to Argentina when he was a boy of nine years. His father made mo ney in Argentina and got his son into the diplomatic servi ce. The son came to Spain during the days of the Monarchy b ut was de­ clared 'persona non grat a' ( ••. ) During the Spanish Republic, Molina returned and he s tayed on as Consul. He has recently ( .•. ) arranged t o give Argentine visas to Jewish _girls. ( ... ) recruited by Dr. Sequerra. ( •.. ) They we r e being per­ mitted to go legitimately and freely to Argentina but found themselves locked up in public hous es when they arrived the re.38

About this time, Madri d began to fill up with notorious Nazis and collaborationists, some of whom worked for Franco's pol i ce as trainers and technical advisers.39 One of the better known Nazis in Madri d at this "time was Otto Skorzeny, the pilot who had rescued Mussolini, who p roposed to set up an engineering center on Montera Street in the Span- i sh capital city. (Peron and Skorzeny were later to become great frie nds.) Meanwhile, former ministers of the Vichy government, the chief of Pe rpig­ nan ' s anti-Jewish militia a nd, according to a variety of sources, Ante 11

Pavelic, the chief o f the collaborati onist Croats, woul d gather at the Cafe Gi jon i n Madrid to chat and pass the time.40 Within this context , Consul Molina 's sinister activ i t i e s do not seem all that surprising.

Of all of the reports which we h ave examined concerning the migra­ tion of Nazis to Argentina, perha ps the most telling i s t hat authored by B. R. Legge, Military Attache a t t he United States Embassy in Berne, Sw itzerland. The report is dated , 1945; that is to say, two days after Bue nos Aires decl ared war on the Axis . Unfortuna tely it lacks, as do most of the other doc uments , precise names and geographic locations . Nonetheless, the s ource l i sted is classified as " very reli­ able" a nd the information i t cont ains seems credible, as one can see from the following, where I quo te t he report almost in its entirety.

Fairly regular p lane traf f ic is reported between Germany and Spain ; the planes do not fly over , but over Northern Italy and the Me diterran ean. These planes are four or six­ motored planes wh i ch were bui lt some time ago for the purpose of assuring t he departure of Nazi German big-wigs for or Argentina a t the desired time; t hey make up a special squadron of p l anes called 'Fuhrer staf f e l,' and the flight personnel have been carefully selec ted .

This traffic with Spain has for i ts object not only the trans ­ fer of funds or the sending o f a gents to Spain, but also the training of personnel i n case , on a c count of a miscarriage of the negotiations which have b een begun in regard to the right of asylum, the great p roject of flight would h ave to be put int o execution .

Spain was chosen for the test f lights because t he Germa ns find in that country many aids ( l anding fields, refueling f acilities , etc.).

During the month of February t wo of these planes are reported to have secured connections to Argentina.

The Na zis are now sending funds and mail to Arge ntina by Argen­ tine diplomatic pouch .

The S . D. places these envelopes going to this destinat ion into pla ne s h aving a clandestine connection with Spain via I taly . In Spain these e nvelopes a re sent to two convents which h av e the op ­ portunit y of putting t hem in the di plomatic p o uch of the Argen­ tine Legation in Spain; thes e convents b elong to orders which maintain s i milar establishments i n Argentina.

In these convents there are s e veral religious Germans who still h ave families in the Reich; the Nazi authorities note t his from postal censorship . P ressure was brought to b e ar on these r e li­ gious people unde r t he threat of e xe cution of members of their fami ly still in Germany, in order to bring them to lend them­ selve s to this illegal t raff i c .41 12

Thus General Legge's report confi rms various points that until now seemed unrelated: a) that Spanish ai r ports were for stopover points f or operations between Germany and Argentina; b) that these activities were known to and supported by the Franco government; c) tha t the air traffic continued even after the rupture of relations between Argentina and Ger­ many, and did not appear to have been interrupted by the Argenti ne decla­ ration of war; and d) that the religio us individuals involved were German and may have had family in Germany. I t is not inconceivable that othe r c onvents might have given refuge or lent assistance to the Na z is for ideo­ logical or humanitarian reasons, as- -according to La Vista--occurred in Italy. Remember that around t his t ime , the Spanish had undertaken a religious crusa de , c ollab o r ating with almost any opponent of the "reds." In the church es , which Franco had saved from destruction, the words of the Go spel railed against communist demons.

General Legge alludes to money t ransfers . We have found only three documents which touch on this theme , but as before, they omit names and b ank account numbers, as i f this aspect of the investigation had been done negligently, or as i f all clues had vanished from the archives.

The first bit of informat ion comes from a United States agent ide nti­ fied as " Z," a nd whose r eport , transmitted from some unknown location in Spain on January 27, 1944--the day after the break in relations between Argentina and the Reich--contains certain items o f interest. " Z" describes the precautions taken by certain German banks and businesses in Buenos Aires to impede the block age o f their funds. The informant closes with this phrase, "Individuals in Germany were notified by friends in Argentina that ... (the diplomatic rupture with the Axis) was no cause for worry ."42

Another report, dated Sep tember 8, 1944, came from Colonel We nde ll G. Johns on, the Military Att a che at the United States Embassy in . Based on informa tion garnered from a communist confidan t , who claimed to be an employee of the Argentine National Bank , Johnson notes that "large dollar deposits are being made i n Argen tine banks. These funds are corn­ ing from Stockholm, Sweden a n d Switzerland" (remember that Per on had sent diplomatic repre sentatives to each of these countries t o a i d the move ment of Nazi to Argentina). Johnson says tha t t he deposi ts supposedly total anywhere from U.S. $100 to $200 million. But aga in there is no men­ tion of names or the spec i fics o f the operation.43

The thir d doctllllent is addressed to t he Secretary of State, and is dated March 10, 1945, two weeks before the Argentine de clara t ion of war. Its author, the First Secretary of the United States Embassy in Bue nos Aires, alludes to the mission's continuing eff orts to verify whe ther or n ot the Argentine banks are indeed ope ning new numbered accounts, possibly even by way of transmission s f rom the Un ited States. He also describes the embassy's uns uccessful a t tempts t o discover how a n d whe n the newly a rrived German f unds are inve sted in industry or farming. The only finan­ cial institution mentioned is the Tornquist Bank, which "had approximately 8 Million pesds (U. S . $2 mill ion) b e l onging to persons or firms in e nemy t erritory and over 50 million pesos ( approximately 12.5 million dollars) of assets of per sons and f irms i n Swit ze rland, the beneficial ownership of which is unknown. 1144 13

Not even fr. ~ slightest reference is made to any f unds wh ich might have been channelled to Peron or Evita. It seems as difficult to sub­ stantiate the stories about t he couple's secret accounts or t he fortune Peron is said to have taken int o exile as it would be to verify t he legend of the treasure of Atahualpa i n Cuzco, Peru. Jose Manuel Alga rbe, Peron's secretary during the former president' s final stage of e xile in Caracas and his first four years in Madrid, has said there is no r e ason to believe that Peron was in any way rich. Algarbe, one of the f ew men Peron trusted who can now discuss his former boss r ationally, maint a ins that the ex-pres­ ident lived off of the interest on his Barcelona and Madri d bank accounts-­ a sum which seldom exceeded U.S. $150,000--and from donat ions made by friends, especially those of J orge Antonio, an auto i mporter and racehorse owner.45 Algarbe speaks quite knowledgeably; it was he who managed the Peron family accounts between 1961 and 1963, including the f unds used to construct the villa "17th of October" in Puerta de Hi e rro, Madr id .

It is incredible to think that ten thousand Germans and Yugoslavs could have left so few traces of t he ir movements. One cannot ascribe such a phenomenon solely to t he chaos and turbulence prevalent in Europe in the immediate postwar period, or to efforts to erase the evidence of s uch a migration, no matter how amb itious .

Neither can one assume that Peron organized this migration merely because of his admiration of and belief i n Prussian technical and military prowess. Peron, as we have seen, was much more a pragmatist than an ideo­ logue. Thus, one must look elsewhe re for his motivations.

The Holy Alliance

Let us return t o the imme diate postwar period. During the presiden­ tial campaign, Peron refused to h ide his staunch anti---as he con­ tinued to do while in exile. He had more than one reason for this hostil­ ity. The Argentine Communist Party wa s fairly well entrenched in the unions in 1946, and Peron, as he himself would say , was interested in at­ tracting "that clientele" to his cause . Al so , the communis ts had allied themselves with the liberals and t he conservatives to form the so-called Democratic Union, whose presfder.tial candidate,Jose Tamorini , was Peron's strongest opponent.

After assrnning the presidency, Peron used his anti-communism as a trump card when negotiating with the United States and Great Britain. In 1950, this ideol ogical credential helped Argen tina secure a $125 million loan from the Import-Export Bank,

I n a we l l-documented a rticle published in Le Monde Di plomati gue, Ignacio Kl ich maintains that, after the war, the search made by the United States and Great Britain for wa r criminals was unde rtaken "without quali­ fied personnel, plans or any priorities. 11 46 In other words, the search, t o the extent that it was ma de, was half-hearted.

In May 1945, General Dw-ight D. Eisenhower ordered the c reation o f 17 investigatory commissions on war criminals. According to Klich, by the time the war was over, "only half of the 1 7 groups were still func­ tioning, and none of these accompani e d the troops which liberated the 14

concentration camps. As well, ver y few of the staff were trained inter­ rogators; even fewer spoke Ge rman. 11 4 7 These were not the least of the errors a nd oversights committed by the allies, accor ding to Klich. In November 1947, for example, the United States discontinued all extradi­ tions of suspected war criminals f r om the Ge rman zone it controlled. As a result , seven Wehrmacht generals responsib le for the destruction of War­ saw, including the SS officers He i n z Reinefath and Ernst Rode, were able to escape being tried.48

By happenstance, with the coming of the , the United States, Great Britain, a n d the Vat ican, c ame to share Argentina's belief that the triumphant communists were more danger o us than the defeated Na zis. As well, the Nazis might be useful i n a variety of ways. The fact that the mass of Nazi emigrants were , f or t h e most part, Catholic, was important to Argentina and the Vatican. The United S-tates and Great Britain, on the other hand, wished to cap t ure tho se well-trained i n i n telligence work . Paths tha t had seemed so opposite only two years earlie r (pro- a nd anti­ Nazi; totalitarian and democratic) n ow t ended to come together.

One of the documents disc ussed t o day demonstrates that, up until 1944 , the Vatican owned asset s i n Argentine banks which p rotected or held Nazi capital. On February 9 , 1945 , R. C. Fenton, a n employee of the British Embassy in Buenos Aires, i n a letter to the English Minis try o f Ec onomic Welfare, c laimed t h at he coul d prove that the Fr e nch and I talia n Bank (Banco Frances e Italian o ) , c ontrolled by the Holy See, "has cer­ tainly worked for the enemy duri n g t he war, perhaps more than any other b ank in South !unerica. 11 49 At the time he wrote the letter, Fenton h ad t he bank un der strict supervi s ion , t o est ablish whe the r or not it was making s uspi cious transfers o f f unds. Howeve r, the bank management soon realized this a nd innnediately took step s to have its trans actions ex­ cluded f r om the black lists .

The Catholic Church was charitably imprudent in the face of cases such as that of the suppos ed Argentine citizen Ricardo Cle ment, abducted by an Israeli commander f r om t he outskirts of Bue nos Ai r es in late 1960. Primate Antonio Cardinal Caggiano declared that the man had come " to our country in sear ch o f forgiveness and oblivion, and it does not matte r what his n a me is, Ricardo Clement or Adolf Eichmann; our obligation as Chris­ tians is to forgive what h e has done. 11 50 Weeks later, when Argentina pro­ tested the violation of its sovere ignty before the Unite d Nations Security Council, , a former foreign minister and a f e rvent Catholic , served as the country's s pokes man. " Ar gentina," said Amadeo , "was always generous in opening its door s to ref ugees f rom all ove r the world: this policy pe rmitted Adolf Eichmann to ente r the country fraudule ntly , in the same way that many did . 1151 Obviously, comparing the executioner t o his victim, and judging each to have c ommitted the same o r iginal sin, is - ~ he p e rfect formula for con cea l me nt: i t is the irony which denies any possibility of punis hing the crime.

Th e Peron gove rnme nt e njoyed the s upport o f the Cathol ic Ch u r ch a t least until the e nd of 1953. An.d during its first seven years , the a d­ ministr a tion' s relationship with the United States impr oved as well. The s e two f acts h ave nothing to do with the protection each gov ernment offere d war criminal s, but rather wi t h the anti-communi sm ideal which 15

prompted the three to c l ose ranks wit h the corning of the Cold War. How­ ever, both Ignac i o Klich and Tuv i a Fr i edman, dire ctor of the Institute for Investigation o f the Ho locaust i n Haifa, Israe l, assert that the b asic reason f or the tolerance shown towa rds the Nazis by the allies was anti­ communism. They say Peron was a l so mo tivated by this s ent iment; or rather, by this need.52

Clear l y each of these f actors wa s contributo ry. But for the Argen­ tine presiden t, the most important element--acco rding to the s t a teme nts which we have s een --wa s his de sire to h a ve a g roup of t rus ted policemen and technicians on h and to h e lp wit h Ar gentina's indus t riali z ation, as well as to monitor and control t he op position, especially among the unions .

Peron's plan was an ambitious o ne . He was able to repay the foreign debt a nd indemnify .those companies which had bee n nationalized, although h e paid a heavy pri c e : by 1949 Arge n t ina' s f oreign r ese rves we r e almost comp l e t ely deplet e d. Bet ween Aug ust 1948 and Aug us t 1950, the Argenti ne peso depreciated in value by 500 perce n t .

I n terms of energy produc t i on, the outp ut of gas do uble d between 194 5 a nd 1955. Si gnif icant p rogr e s s was made in light i ndus try, whe re t he g overnme nt only inte rve ned i n direc t l y: the ma nufacturing index , lis t ed at 1 14 i n 1945 , i ncr eased to 150 in 194 8. Four year s of sta gna tion fol ­ lowe d, but i n 1955 the i ndex h a d i ncreased to 163 . Th e ~ew i ndus tries grew r apidly : petrochemicals , meta llurgy, domestic appliance plants. Heavy industry, however, remained depen dent on f oreign mark e ts, and a g riculture, the most lucrative export sector, s uff ered a g reat se t back .

The o l d war cri minals settl ed mostly in communities i n the mountains of Cordoba and nea r the Pa t agonia n An dean lakes . They t e n ded t o cong re­ gate in s mall tourist t owns : San Martin de los Ande s, Juni n de l os An des , Ba riloche, a nd La Angostur a--near the border with Chile--a nd Cura Broch e ro and La Cumbre cit a, in Cordoba. Settlers of Ge rma n, Aus t rian, and Yugosla v ori gin compri s e d only 5 perce nt of these t own ' s popula t i on in 1943; s t a t is­ tics i n 1961 s h owed a n i ncrease to app r oximatel y 23 pe r cent . 5 3

There is no e videnc e o f war criminal immigrants having served as ad­ visers to the Ar gen t ine police or any o the r s e c u r ity forces , excep t in the case o f Milo Bogetich, I sabel's b odyguard. But these me n a nd the i r p asts we nt on to s h a pe the p resent reali ty in Ar gentina through a v a rie t y of ways : by way o f the ir r elation s wi t h n ationalist l e aders such as Gu ille rmo Pa tric io Ke lly; t hrough the t i es between cert ain othe r nation­ a l ist l eade r s (Marcelo Sa n chez Sorondo, Mario Ama deo) and me mb ers o f the Army Hi gh Command; t h rough t h e cont acts t h ese wa r c r i minals maintaine d wi th ant i - comnnm i s t pri est s such as Fat h er Julio Me invielle; t hrough the friendly tie s t hey cultiva t ed wit h Per on in Santo Domingo a n d Madrid , e t c . Th erefore , they i nfiltra t e d v a rious s e ctors o f the Argentine societ y a n d exten ded t h e mselves much like an oil sta in to t he middle class e s and s , tra n s f ormin g the Argentine societ y into a r epress i ve a nd a u t hori­ tarian country . 5 4 No country can open its doors t o this class of crin!i na l a nd s till sleep s oundly . No n ation cross e s these dark bounda rie s o f h ~s­ t ory wi t h i mp unity . 16

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Argentine e xce sses of the past eight years can be attributed to so remote a c a use as the immi­ g r ati on of Nazis between 1947 and 1950, but surel y there is some conne c­ tion. Similarities are seldom coincidental . After we learn more about Argentina's recent history, it wo u l d b e usef ul to ask whe t he r it is only a coincidence t hat the use of t o r t u re attained s uch heigh ts of cruelty and sophistication. We should continue to ask ourselves whethe r or not the appearance of c onc entration camps , ma s s graves, and hun dreds o f bodies floating in Argentine rivers a fter 19 74 is merely coincident a l; what is t he significance of the fact t hat the s e ceremonies of mult iple deaths reached their climax duri ng t he mi litary regime o f Videl a , Viol a, Massera , and Galtieri.

There is an abundance of testimony about the Nazi symbols which adorned Ar gentine torture cha mbers d uri ng the last eigh t ye ars. There too, a n d pictures of Hit l e r helped set the stage f or death. His tory is always a game of relati onships and associations . In t he mid­ nine teenth centur y , Juan Baut ist a Albe rdi proclaimed t hat " t o r ule is to populate"; to conquer the Argent:ipe desert, it was necess ary to pop ulate it. However, it could not be settled b y just any t ype of people ; it was important that they be skille d and white in order to i mprove the race and i mpose limi ts on brutality. The c ultured Europea ns which Alberdi foresaw a re the same German technic i a ns Peron wa nte d a century later to indus t ria l ­ ize Argentina. The future, a s Bo r ges says, is another name for the p ast.

As a key figure in the mili tarization of Argentine society , Peron, while in power, enth r oned ma n y of the concepts t hat he had lea r ned and taught at the Superio r War Col lege . One of his princi pal i deas was, as we h a ve seen, "The Na t ion i n Arms ," tha t is prepa ration f or war e ven in times of peac e , p l acing all t he country's resources a nd r iches unde r the control of a leader who, obviously, should rise f rom among t he ranks of the arme d forces . SS Peron's deep anti-communism a nd ob session about cre a t i ng a self-sufficient a rmy--one whi ch could build its own arms--were factors which helped lead to the opening of Arge ntina' s doors to the ser­ v a nts .of the Reich whic h Peron had admire d so ambiguously .

Among the books i n Peron ' s Madrid library, none was bound in Jewish skin. Nonetheless , h e had n o lack of f rie nds who might have once bee n t emp ted t o present him with some such gift. 17

REFERENCES

1 Torcuato Lu.. ca de Tena, Luis Calvo & Esteban Peicovich , eds., Yo , Juan Domingo Peron - Re la to autobiografico. Barcelona, Espana : Editor- ial Planeta, 1976, p. 85 . 2 See i bid., p. 86. 3 J acob Tsur, Cartas credenciales . Jerusalem: La Semana Pub lica- ciones, 1983, pp. 154-161, 227- 228. 4 Interview with Jose Manuel Al garbe, Peron's former secretary, Caracas, February 19, 1977. 5 Alain Ro uquie, Poder militar y sociedad polftica en la Argentina . Buenos Ai res: Emece Ed itores, 1981, p. 295 . 6 See ibid., p. 294. 7 Joseph Page, Peron, A Biography. New York: , 1983, p. 89. 8 .. Samples : "Todo ejercito decae, e nvejece y muere con s u condutor" ( p . 217) . "El conductor no solo debe saber conducir un e j e rci to a l a victoria; tambie n debe s aberlo cre ar, armarlo, equiparlo, i nstruirlo, vestirlo, alimentarlo. " ( p. 216) "Un conductor de ejer cito no se hace por decreto, sino que nace y es desti nado con anterioridad" ( p. 215) . "Un conductor debe nacer con el s uf i ciente oleo de Samuel" (p . 216) . " El conductor debe sentirse apoyado y protegido por un poder s uperior" (p . 225) . 9 r nterview wit h Peron , Madri d, Ma r ch 26-30, 1970. See Panorama, Buenos Aires , No . 155, p. 23 . 10 See ibid. 11 Uno de los polfticos conservadores mas cons picuous , e l v ice- presidente Julio A. Ro ca, habfa de clarado en Landres, en un dis curso ofic ial: "La Ar gentina es, por su independencia recfproca , desde el punto de vista e conomico, una parte i'. nt e grante de l .Rei no Unido ." Y uno de ~e 's col abora dores, Guillermo Leguizamon, agrego : " La Ar gentina es una de l as j oyas mas preciadas de la corona de Su Graciosa Maj estad." Quot e d in Rouquie, see s upra note 5, p. 257 . 12 See ibid., p. 294. 13 Carlos S. Fayt, La naturale za del peronismo . Buenos Aires: Vir a cocha Edi tor es, 1967, p. 55. 14 ,. Juan Peron, El pueblo quiere saber de gue se t rata. Buenos Aires: Editorial Freeland , 1973, pp . 161-162 . Date of t he speech : August 25, 1944. 15 . . Bo rufacio del Carril, Cronica interna de la Revolucion Liberta dora. Buenos Ai r es : Emece Editores , 1959, pp . 31-32. 18

REFERENCES

16 Robert A. Potash , El e jerc ito y la polf tica en la Argentina. 1928-1945. Buenos Aires: Edi t orial Sudamericana, 1971, pp. 344-345, 356-35 7.

l 7s ee ibid., pp. 361-36 2.

18 ~ ~ Juan Peron, Tres revol uciones rnilitares. Buenos Aires: £scorpion Ediciones, 1963, pp. 96-97. 19 See some samples in Page , supra note 7, pp. 145-146.

20 11 Memorandum of the State Depar t ment, Consultation Among the Ame r i - can Republics with Respect to the Argentine Situation," known as the Blue Book, pp. 131, made pub l i c on February 11, 1946. 21 See supra note 7, p. 88. 22 U.S. Military Attache , Ch i l e , t o Military Intelli gence Division, I.G. No. 5940/94-57, Septembe r 8, 1944. "Z" to OSS, OSS File No. A-20235/10452-128, January 27, 1944. 23 Eugenio P. Rom, Asi hablaba Juan Peron. Buenos Aires: Pena Li llo, 1980, pp. 121-122. 24 . Taped int e r view, J une 18, 1972 . 25 See supra, note 1, p. 11. 26 See M. Moyano, " Submari nos alema nes en Mar del Plata," Toda es historia, No. 72 , April 1973, pp. 37-47 . 27 See supra note 1, pp. 85-86. I n extenso:

En Nuremberg se estaba realizando entonces alga que yo, a titulo personal j uzgaba coma una infamia y coma una funesta leccion para el futuro de la Humanidad . Y no solo yo, sino el pueblo argent ino. Adquir! la certeza de que los argentinos tamb ien considerabam el proceso de Nuremberg coma una i nf amia, i ndigna de las vencedores, que se comportaban como si no lo fueran. Ahora entonc.es dandonos cuenta de que merecfan haber perdido la guerra. Cuantes veces durant e mi gobierno pronuncie discursos a cargo de Nurembe rg, que es la enormidad mas gr ande que no perdonara la historia! 28 From W. N. Walmsley, J r . , Counsel or for Economic Affairs at U.S . Embassy, Rome, to Se cretar y of State, 800 .142/9-547, Sep t ember 5, 1947. Enclosed with La Vista Repo rt . 29 s ee i·b i · d • 19

REFE RE NCES

30 See supra note 1, p. 87.

31I nterview. wit. h Mgr. Juan Busolini, from Comision Ver i f icadora de la Direccion Nacional de Energia Atomica ( 19 52), Buenos Aires, Jul y 6, 1967. Sefun Le Honde Diplomatique , July 1983, p. 4, "Le scandale de la dispersion nazie dans le Tiers-Monde , 11 Tank,

"autrefois inge~n ieur chez Focke Wulfe," dirigi o" a "plusieurs douzai nes de scientifiques, de techni ciens et d 'ingenieurs na zi s" en l a construccion de "l ' avian de chasse argenti n Pulqui a l' Institut Aeronautique de Cordoba. Apres la chute de Peron, Tank et une douzaine de ses collaborateurs s 'installerent en Inde, ou i ls contribuirent a la raise au point du HF- 24 et coopere r ent egalement avec des experts allemands en Egypte." 32 Quoted in Orestes D. Confalonieri , Peron contra Peron. Buenos Aires : Editorial Antyqua, 1956, p. 214 ( Source: Clarin, Buenos Aires, October 7, 1955) . 33 See s upra note 31, Le Monde Di plomat igue, p . 1. 34 Felix Luna, El 45. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1973, p. 55. 35 Taped interview with JDP, , 1970. 36 Inter view with teniente general Francisco Sal gado- Araujo, Madrid, September 3, 19 70 . 37 U.S. Naval Attache, Madrid, Spa in, to Nava l Intelligence Division, No. 92278/ F-3-0644, August 30, 1944 . 38 U. S. Military Attache , October 12, 1945. Other statements: "Sources state that before giving any passports, Sr. Mo lina consulted with the Ge rman Gestapo i n Barcelona and only i f they consented di d he issue the passport. The source, having been in the Miranda Conce ntra­ tion Camp a nd occupying a position where he saw the archives and t alked with many of the interne d refugees, was in position information which gives credence to his accusations." 39 Ma x Gallo , Histoire de l'Espagne Franq uiste . De la prise du pouvoir a 1950. Paris: Ma r about Universite, 19 75, p. 191. 40 see ibid. En J ulio de 1949, la Camara de Diputados a r gentina aprobo un pedido de informes al gobierno de Per on sobre l a presunta entrada a Bue nos Aires de Ante Pavelic. La version--que el gobierno nego--indicaba que Pave lic habfa l legado a bordo de un barco italiano , disfrazado de sacerdote . 20

REFERENCES

41 U.S. Military Attache , Berne, Swi tzerland, to Mi l itary Intellige n ce Division, C.I.D. No. 123156/ I .. 481 2 , March 28 , 1945. 42 See supra note 22. 43 see ibid. 44 . . David G. Berger, First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy, Buenos Ai res, to Secretary of State, No . 000.515/12-644, OSS File XL6811, March 10, 1945.

45s ee supra note 4 . 46 See supra note 31, Le Monde Diplomatique, p. 1. 47 See ibid., p. 22. 48 See ibid. 49 R. C. Fenton, Buenos Aires, to Mi nistry of Economic Warfar e , London. Enclosure No. 1 to di spat ch No. 21.010 of February 14, 19 45 from U.S. Embassy at London, Englan d. so See La Razon , Buenos Ai res, 23 de Diciembre 1960, p. 1. 51 See Le Mon de Diplomati que, Aout 19 83 : ": pragrnatisme oblige" par Ignacio Klich, p . 22. 52 See s up ra note 29, p. 22 . 53 Direcci6n Nacional de Estadis tica s y Censos, Buenos Aires, 1972. See "Informe sabre ciudades con menos de 5 . 000 habitant es." 54 see Marysa Navarro, Los nac i o nali stas. Buenos Ai r e s : Editorial Jorge Alvare z , 1968, pp. 215-234. Roge lio Garcia Lupo, La Rebelion de los generales. Buenos Aire s: Proceso, 1962, pp. 71- 78 . Richard Gil­ lespie. Soldiers of Peron . Argenti na' s Montoneros. Ne w Yo rk : Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 284. 55 See supra note 14, p p. 69-86. Da te o f speech: June 10, 1944.